The present invention broadly relates to a new and improved apparatus for collating folded printed products, especially signatures or sheets.
In its more particular aspects, the present invention concerns a new and improved apparatus for collating folded printed signatures or sheets in which the printed signatures or sheets are delivered in a straddling manner to and deposited upon a collating conveyor or upon the most recently delivered printed signature or sheet to have been previously deposited thereupon.
Known apparatuses for collating printed signatures or sheets, as described, for example, in the Swiss Pat. No. 412,795, have a plurality of deposit stations arranged along a collating conveyor. The folded printed signatures are removed from a stack, opened and deposited in a straddling manner on the collating conveyor or on the previously deposited printed signature which is already present on the collating conveyor at this location. Since each printed signature must be individually removed from a stack, it is not possible to arbitrarily increase the operational speed of such apparatuses. Furthermore, the printed signatures, which as a rule leave the rotary printing press in an imbricated formation, must first be formed into a stack which then must be brought to the deposit stations. This requires, however, a significant expenditure of time, infrastructure, equipment and/or manpower.
These disadvantages are substantially eliminated by an apparatus known from the European Patent Publication No. 0,095,603, published Dec. 7, 1983 and corresponding to the U.S. Pat. No. 4,489,930, granted Dec. 25, 1984. In this known apparatus, the printed products are fed continuously, i.e. directly in the arriving formation, to the collating conveyor. Consequenatly, the printed products do not have to be stacked up into a stack as was previously the case. This apparatus, however, has the disadvantage of a relatively great structural length since its feeders have the same feeding direction as the collating conveyors at least in the transfer or delivery region of the folded printed signatures or sheets. The collating conveyors transport the printed signatures or sheets in a direction which is transverse or approximately at right angles to their folded edge. Moreover, it is not possible to increase the operational speed of this apparatus in the amount desired.
From the previously mentioned related and commonly assigned United States patent application Ser. No. 877,359, filed June 23, 1986, and entitled "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COLLATING FOLDED PRINTED PRODUCTS, ESPECIALLY SIGNATURES OR SHEETS", now U.S. Pat. No. 4,684,116, granted Aug. 4, 1987, an apparatus is known which comprises collating conveyors arranged in an annular array about an axis of revolution and mounted in a support frame to form a collating cylinder. The direction of conveyance of these product collating conveyors or produce advancing means is substantially parallel to the axis of revolution of the collating cylinder and these collating conveyors are revolvingly driven about this axis of revolution. The spaces or distances between each of the adjacent collating conveyors remain constant during rotation. These spaces or distances must, on the one hand, be large enough that the collating conveyors can move past one another in an unobstructed fashion during their revolution about the longitudinal axis of the collating apparatus. On the other hand, these distances are to be matched or coordinated to the mutual distance or spacing of the printed signatures or sheets which are delivered in an imbricated formation and deposited onto the collating conveyors.